Virtuosity is a 1995 science fiction film directed by Brett Leonard. The movie tells of a new virtual reality training program for cops. SID 6.7 (Aussie import Russell Crowe), the villain program in charge of the sim, is mothballed after causing a brain overload in one of the playtesters, but the lead scientist refuses to quit. In revenge, he transplants SID into an android body and sets him loose in a major city.

Parker Barnes (Denzel Washington), an ex-cop and one of the surviving testers, is reinstated in order to stop SID before he embarrasses the hell out of everyone. SID was created as an amalgam of hundreds of real-life murderers, including Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein. Apparently, all that evil smashed together results in...Adam Levine, pretty much. But one of the ghost personalities in SID was also responsible for killing Barnes' wife, which adds spice to their deadly game.

The film was shot in and around Los Angeles, though the film's setting is not identified.

The movie provides examples of:

Alien Blood: Apart from his brain, SID is silicon-based, causing him to squirt blue goo whenever he rebuilds himself.

Appendage Assimilation: SID can regrow blown-off appendages with glass. It doesn't appear to be that pleasant for him.

Beard of Sorrow: Barnes has a beard and dreadlocks as a prisoner. He shaves them when he is reinstated to hunt down SID.

Bond One-Liner: The first test subject, Donovan, dies off-screen when SID electrocutes him and stuffs his body in a sushi display case.

SID: He's chilling out.

Bottomless Magazines: Barnes manages to take 30+ shots at SID in the nightclub without reloading his standard-issue service pistol once.

Boxed Crook: Parker. He gets an Explosive Leashimplanted for his trouble. He's let off the hook by Cochran just as Deane is about to execute him.

Condemned Contestant: Convicts are used to test the new (and inadvertently deadly) VR police training system. Barnes is an ex-cop who, in a break from the norm, is actually guilty of the crime he was imprisoned for.

Composite Character: Fifty terabytes is a lot of freaking memory, even today. Lindenmeyer could never program SID by himself, so he "grew" him in a vat of criminal algorithms.

The Dead Can Dance: Who knew Atilla the Hun could cut a rug? Well, pouring the souls of 183 homicidal maniacs into a computer got boring after awhile, so Lindenmeyer added in an orchestra director. And even androids can't resist the BeeGees!

Emoticon: Barnes locates SID in the training program through the clue left on the side of one building. "Semicolon, parenthesis: smiley face." This is an instance of Unintentional Period Piece in that Barnes has to explain the concept of emoticons to another person.

Famous, Famous, Fictional: In addition to the real-world gangsters and dictators who inspired SID 6.7, there appear to be some fictional baddies, like Matthew Grimes, the anarchist who blew up Parker's family.

Forgotten Fallen Friend: Billy is pretty much forgotten about by Parker after Lindenmeyer clubs him to death rather brutally.

Fun with Acronyms: A Blink-and-You-Miss-It example. As Parker and Donovan search for SID in the sim, SID himself appears as a news anchor virtual reality head talking about himself, warning the listeners about the killer and describing him as "Sadistic, Intelligent, and Dangerous."

Ghost in the Machine: As he makes small talk with Barnes, SID seems to suggest that bomber Matthew Grimes ranked low in the hierarchy of Lindenmeyer's data. (Carter explains that SID's mind is like a war zone, with 183 psychopaths wrestling for control at any given time.) However, seeing Barnes again causes the Grimes personality to have a greater degree of influence. Hence SID's last scheme: mother-daughter hostage team with a time bomb attached.

Gone Horribly Right: SID 6.7 was intended to essentially be the ultimate criminal, the idea being that if cops could catch him in the simulation, catching any real-life criminal would be easy. Unfortunately, SID figures out how to first start killing people inside the simulation...and then escape into the real world.

Groin Attack: Parker does this—twice—to the racist white inmate who tried to kill him when he got back from being a guinea pig.

Hot Scientist: Dr. Madison Carter, a psychologist who's pretty attractive. Barnes even admits this to Carter's young daughter when asked.

Jack the Ripoff: SID 6.7's personality is an amalgamation of 200 notorious criminal personalities. So, when he gets a physical body, he starts murdering in the style of assorted killers (i.e. writing "death to the pigs" in blood like Charles Manson).

Large Ham: Russell Crowe had so much fuuuun with this movie. Given that his character is basically the robot Joker, it was probably the right way to play it.

Laughably Evil: SID is a murderous and sadistic A.I., but boy is he fun to watch at times.

Loves the Sound of Screaming: SID 6.7 uses a roomful of hostages at a dance club as a source of a variety of screams, which he then remixes with the club's equipment for his enjoyment.

Magic Countdown: Double subverted with the last bomb...which countdowns normally, until Barnes tries anything...at which point it speeds up. Desperate, Barnes uses wiring in his prosthetic arm to try and foul it up...which only makes it countdown faster...and then glitch up, "de-activating" the bomb.

Mind Hive: SID 6.7 is a virtual program who eventually gets downloaded into a self-regenerating android body. He's assembled out of the minds of dozens of psychopaths, murderers and dictators, including the dead terrorist Matthew Grimes, Barnes's previous nemesis. Grimes is repeatedly brought to the surface when SID comes face-to-face with Barnes and influences SID's desire to gain world notoriety.

Murder.com: SID takes over a TV studio and announces "Death TV," where the viewers get to vote by telephone on which member(s) of the studio audience he kills and how he does it.

SID 6.7: All you have to do, sweet viewers, is ask! So, what do you want? Strangulation? Mutilation? Cannibalism? Gunshots? Stabbings? I'll slice, I'll dice, I'll julienne! How about hanging...by the testicles?

SID does a version of this speech over the radio to Barnes and Dr. Carter while being chased.

SID 6.7: I've been thinking, Parker. We have so much in common psychologically. Wouldn't you agree, Dr. Carter? We have such a history together. We'd make a great team. A dynamic duo. Who else touches the world with synthetic hands? Who else has been locked out of the real world and is now just learning to free? Who else do you know that's a multiple murderer...just like you?

He also tries to do a version of this speech to the entire human race.

SID 6.7: What I am is not my fault. It's not even my choice. I came to be because of what YOU are. Face it, folks—to kill is in your nature!

He kind of has a point—nothing about him is programmed, everything is copied from human behavior, albeit that of psychotic criminals.

Number of the Beast: SID 6.7's version number is supposedly an oblique reference to 666. It's 6.66 rounded to one decimal place.

Reality Warper: When SID 6.7 realizes he is back in VR, he screams "YOU'RE IN MY WORLD NOW!!!" and twists the building around in an attempt to kill Barnes.

Roaring Rampage of Revenge: How Parker ended up in jail; it's revealed in flashbacks that, after Matthew Grimes killed Parker's family, Parker tracked Grimes down, slaughtering him and his henchmen. Unfortunately, Grimes was doing an interview with a two-person news crew so that he could gloat over how cool he was, and after Parker got done killing the dirty bastard, he killed the news team by accident, turning and firing on them, thinking they were just more of Grimes' mooks.

Shapeshifter Guilt Trip: SID is able to briefly shift his face and voice to look like Matthew Grimes, the terrorist who killed Barnes' family. SID explains that seeing Barnes brings Grimes, out of all 183 criminals, "oozing to the surface."

Grimes kidnapped Barnes' wife and daughter, and they ended up killed by his bomb.

SID kidnaps Dr. Carter's daughter and has her placed near a time bomb.

You Are Number 6: Each of Lindenmeyer's creations are in the beta phase. "Sushi Chef" and "Geisha Girl" have their own releases, also.

Your Mind Makes It Real: Not a straight example; the system is designed to train cops in combat situations, similar to the US Army's Real Life Force XXI program. The problem is that different people worked on different parts of the system and didn't understand how Lindenmeyer's maniacal AI could abuse it. The Dev Team Thought of ALMOST Everything; they programmed in non-lethal simulations of being shot, bludgeoned and even bitten, but when SID decided to try electrocuting someone, the poor chump's brain overloaded.

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